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KHAYAL

Ramashreya Jha’s Timeless Kirwani

Scattered thoughts on some renditions of compositions in Kirwani

One of the most beautiful imports from Carnatic music is the raag Kirwani. It maps directly to the harmonic minor scale, but as you know, the raag isn’t the scale. Sure, the raag has some structure, some roughly agreed-upon rules, by whom no one knows. That is to say that the raag is whatever the artist reciting it makes out to be at a given point in time. It is a fleeting thing, even when it is recorded, which is what numerous singers, such as Mehdi Hassan and Salamat Ali Khan, among others, said in their interviews: a raag is ever new. It comes into being when you recite it. This can’t be said with the same force for, say, western classical music, which, in principle, is supposed to be quite rehearsed, structured, and planned.

Recently, I was thinking about two of Ramashreya Jha’s compositions in Kirwani, which I first stumbled upon while listening to Raja Kale’s short but mesmerizing recital. It is eleven minutes of bliss that I don’t think even Raja Kale will be able to recreate. I have also listened to one of Raja Kale’s disciples, Aditya Ranade, rendering these compositions in a riyaaz-type setting from the comfort of his room. It is a much more relaxed rendition. In this recording, although the camera is an…